


What Battle Teaches

by agdhani



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Thursday Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3323093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agdhani/pseuds/agdhani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the blood is flying, there are some things one doesn't expect to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Battle Teaches

Just who the strangers were did not matter. Men in the three unflagged ships came ashore, dressed like pirates, no sooner setting foot in Nassau when the fighting broke out. Dressed like brigands…but fighting like British soldiers. Flint saw it. Vane saw it too. The need to protect their little stretch of home territory, the world they were trying to build, their way of life…and Eleanor…was enough for the captains to set their differences aside for the moment. It was a truce of sorts, though alliances between such men rarely lasted.

Side by side they fought, letting their men battle elsewhere. Pistols had been discarded for swords. Flint swung, decapitating the first man to cross his path, and glanced briefly at Vane with an expression of triumph.

He had drawn first blood.

Lips curled in a smirk, Vane mimicked the attack precisely, killing two with his powerful blow.

The look in his eyes when they locked with Flint’s brought heat to the older man’s cheeks.

Or maybe it was the burning summer sun and the exertion of battle.

Body after body piled around them, forcing them to push their assailants away from the docks and nearer the sea. Surrounded as the enemy realized they were the two to remove, the two upon which the battle hinged, the two were soon pressed back to back. Flint could feel the strength, the rippling, of the muscles of Vane’s bare skin moving against his sweat soaked cotton clad back. Above the scents of ocean surf, sweat and blood, he detected something else, something primal, powerful intoxicating…a scent that was entirely Vane’s, and when he realized the source, his nostrils flared. He must have made a sound, for Vane turned his head and again met his gaze, this time with exultant grin.

Flint growled with intended annoyance and anger, but even to his ears the tone of it came across as something very different.

He side stepped a blow. Vane instinctively dodged in the opposite direction, which put him in the line of fire of another man’s rounded fist. He staggered, might have stayed on his feet, but the slippery sand stole his balance and another movement from Flint knocked him off further. The attacker thought to have the advantage, but Flint fell on him in a fury and drove his own blade through the fellow’s throat. He reached back without thinking to help Vane to his feet and when the man grasped his hand the contact sent a jolt through Flint’s entire body as if he had been burned. His arm jerked, pulling Vane back up into the fight, Flint telling himself that the sensation was the sting of some internal injury, nothing more. But when Vane held that grasp a little too long, long enough to punch another assailant in the nose and elbow another below the rib cage, Flint knew it was intentional…knew that the other man had felt it too.

“Nice shot…” he managed to shout over the chaos of combat. He tore his gaze away, locked it onto the elbowed fellow Vane had knocked into his path, and head-butted him.

Vane smirked. “Not so bad yourself…” He let go of Flint’s hand, satisfied with the curl of the other man’s lips, and threw himself back into the fight.

They fought as a team now, not two men fighting side by side but working together, double teaming opponents, keeping the other from harm, until the last of the invading force were round up and taken as hostages for interrogation at a later time. The dead would have to be collected, counted, and buried, the wounded tended to, but the pirates of Nassau, led by Captains Flint and Vane, had been victorious this day.

“Well fought,” Flint said through pants for air, know bending with his hands on his knees to regain his breath.

“Not bad for an old man.”

Flint snorted and chuckled. “Who are you calling old? I kept up with you, didn’t I?”

“Only because I let you.” Vane leaned in and wiped a smudge of blood off of Flint’s cheek near his mouth. Flint caught his breath, involuntarily licked his lips and found himself leaning slightly nearer as well, his gaze looking up from his bent position that had his face at eye level with a part of Vane he had never wanted to see up close. Never…until now. “You had something on your face…”

Vane’s husky voice and the leer of lust and domination pulled at Flint’s insides until they were twisted into a knot of something all too familiar, but a shout of his name from someone further up the beach, and the realization that this was the last thing he needed in front of the men…especially here, in public, made Flint stand up straight and clear his throat.

If he thought Vane would be offended or angered, he was mistaken. All he got from the other captain was a smirk.

“I’d say we’re due for a drink after that,” Flint said, hoping the roughness in his voice would pass for toughness rather than desire. “Care to join me?” His attention, despite his best intentions, travelled down the man’s toned form and locked back onto Vane’s face once more.

Vane cocked his head, stared into Flint’s eyes with direct purpose, taking that roaming gaze as a sign, and let his leer turn into a satisfied smile. They had been rivals for so long, maybe things were about to change. Decidedly in his favor, he thought with triumphant hope. “Don’t mind if I do…” he rumbled. “Never thought you’d ask.”

Flint laughed and threw his arm about Vane’s shoulder in a friendly fashion and they began their trek through the sand back towards the tavern. “First time for everything I suppose.” Eleanor Guthrie, and the dead, were going to have to wait.


End file.
